CONFESSION 1
Feeling helpless was
not something new for her. It became a practice so that she stopped worrying
about being alone or solving things on her own. Nobody cared how she was feeling
when they were commanding. Nobody noticed how much efforts she took in
coordinating the messiest people in the world. She became so habituated to the
attitude of the people around her and the whole business of making her
responsible for every problem that happened. Hence it did not bring a surprise
at all when she found herself to be the person who was responsible for the dirty
classroom. How much tension should an eight year old lady should go through!
She being the class leader of the prestigious government LP School and being a
member of the eldest class of the school the trouble was doubling.
“Anu, didn’t I tell
you to keep the classroom clean?” the teacher asked and she was wondering if
she was ever being appointed instead of Lina chechi who used to do the
cleaning. She was thinking if Lina chechi got dismissed for any sort of
misconduct. Well, the class teacher was really angry and despite Anu’s all
attempts to explain the situation the teacher went on scolding her and the
other girls for not meeting her expectations even after becoming the eldest
girls in the school who must be role models to the younger ones. All the girls
stood up and with their heads facing their feet they were cursing the first
person whose face they casted their eyes upon in the morning. Anu suddenly
dared to stop the teacher exposing the true villain who was responsible for the
scraps and mess in the classroom. She daringly said, “Teacher we cleaned the
classroom in the morning. During the interval it was Rajiv who was playing with
the papers making planes and something else. It was he who jumped over your
table and chair. We cleaned the class in the morning. God promise!”. She being
very clear and sensible, the teacher noticed the fading smile on Rajiv’s face
and she commanded him to come to her ready to receive the ceremonial lashes
with the new bamboo stick the tip of which Anu had ornamented with a few rubber
bands to add up to the misery it could produce. She asked him to show his hand
and he received a few lashes for the misbehavior. Anu was happy that she could
save the womenfolk from disgrace. There had been rift and tensions between the
ladies and gentlemen of that class. They could not get along well at all. Only
in one thing the class could agree; they all hated Anu’s class leadership!
That afternoon while
Anu was busy with her playmates Rajiv came to her. He stood right in front of
her stopping her from going away from him. She could not believe how arrogant
he was to do that. He called her “kuthe ki bachi” and he was yelling it out as
if it was some motto. She did not understand what he was saying and with a
puzzled face she stared at him and this gentleman was kind enough to explain
that it means “daughter of a bitch” in Hindi. Her eyes were filled with tears.
What an insult it was! How could she possibly take it! She could not
reciprocate and after a few seconds’ shock she said “ I will not tell this to
teacher. But you see, God is hearing everything. He will certainly punish you.
you just wait and see”. The bell rang and she was not quite herself after that.
She waited eagerly for the bell to go off so that she could run towards the
exciting weekend which was just a few hours away.
At night when she was
praying, she thought of Rajiv and pleaded God to teach him a lesson which he
would not forget in his life. He should not swear at anyone hereafter.
Her plans for
Saturday and Sunday were drenched in the rain and she was confined in to the
house and she managed to write letter to her mother who was working in the
capital city of Kerala. She wrote about everything except the insult Rajiv
showered upon her. She did not want to make her mother sad by saying the filthy
words he made.
Monday was as
uninteresting as possible. The start of another week was like the start of a
set of terrible headaches. She was fed up with the enormous responsibilities
she had to fulfil. She went in uniform which was not ironed because of the
usual power failure preceding the rain. She went and called her friend to come
out and then her dad who was reading the newspaper called Anu and said that
school would have a holiday. Jumping with glee Anu asked for the reason and he
said that a student had passed away the evening before and Anu was shocked. He read
out the news to her. As she was listening to him she understood what the word
guilt really meant and how that feeling could inject pain into one’s mind. “Rajiv
Rajappan was playing with a whistle which he swallowed unwittingly and… was a
student of standard 4B of Government LP School”. She did not listen carefully
to the things he read out because she knew that God had executed His plan as
per the requests she made a few evenings before. But she wanted to tell someone
that she did not want him to be dead, she did not want him to be so far away
like this.
Her classmates lined
up in a mourning rally to his home. She could hear the cries and wails of his
parents from distance itself. As she saw his body covered in white clothes she
felt that she was responsible for this divine crime. And nobody came to arrest
her. Nobody punished her. She wished to run away from there and she for the
first time understood that his face was that of an angel. While walking back
alone home she wondered how he could veil this cherubic face beneath his
demonic appearance! It started to rain and the heavy drops washed her tears off
and went on doing it…
